World Expo Interactive Projection

For the majority of the World Expo, projections onto the Al Wasl Plaza featured pre-rendered, atmospheric content. In contrast, the experience that AIM was looking to create would be interactive and rendered in real-time. A dynamic, vibrant story that changes and evolves with each visitor who interacts with it. This project would be experienced by a global audience in the thousands, and we all wanted to make it count.

A project of this scale is always going to require immense collaboration and integration. And, given the World Expo’s ethos of bringing together global partners together, this project would be no exception. From the moment AIM brought us onto the project, we worked closely to refine the creative direction and animation. We also collaborated with local fabricators and IT teams in constructing the custom interactive pods, and ensuring technical support and online maintenance.

Beyond this, we prioritised deep collaboration with the companies responsible for the hardware infrastructure of the Plaza, the overall integration of the building, and the Expo’s own management community, data security and IT infrastructure teams. In this case, due to the scale of the work, we even went as far as to send a small team over to Dubai for six months to collaborate with all of these organisations on the ground.

Like many of our projects, ‘Become a Guardian of Al Wasl’ required a custom interaction interface. In this case, the interface spanned two devices – an interactive pod to visually preview the avatar, and a tablet through which to customise it. Within each pod was a large, portrait-mode screen, a Windows machine running Unreal Engine, and a DMX controller system to operate the built-in LED lights. In fact, the pods were so hardware intensive that we ended up installing built-in air conditioning and ventilation to keep them running reliably throughout the Expo.

Actually projecting the content onto the dome itself was an exercise of integration. The overarching projection system for the Al Wasl Plaza was based on a Disguise network linking together over 250 projectors across the dome’s circumference. While we did not manage this network directly, we worked closely with the Disguise Vendor to ensure that the Unreal Engine content we were developing would perform flawlessly on the dome. This process involved many months of collaborative development to add features and remove bugs as we worked with the very bleeding edge of their software.

It can be easy to think that digital experiences – even those with a physical aspect – can be only that; digital. But most often, the human element is surprisingly important. In the case of ‘Become a Guardian of Al Wasl’, the human hosts provided by AIM did more than just functionally facilitate the experience. They also extended the experience by helping tell the story, providing interesting background information, and generally being a friendly, warm presence throughout the entire journey. They made the experience that more special for each and every visitor.